News and information from inside the labour movement

Menu

Tag Archives: unison

Here are the runners and riders with our odds as compiled by the Tea Urn team

RMT-TSSA

This seems to have gone cold in the last year or so. It was considered at the highest level by both unions but a source tells us that talks foundered over the level of power to be devolved to branches: the TSSA has a more diffuse power structure while the RMT is more centralised and the national leadership retains a lot of authority over the conduct of disputes and so on.

11-4 Still plenty of potential but a few issues to resolve before TeSSA gets on board the Bob Express.

Unite-PCS

A much talked-about match-up here, and certainly both Len McCluskey and Mark Serwotka are interested. The main sticking point would be the political fund dowry: how to reconcile Unite’s central role in the Labour Party with the PCS’s tradition of independence (long treasured by the rightwing leadership; now by the far-left leadership). We understand that they are not considering an Affiliated Fund / General Fund split, like UNISON’s.

7-2 (nap) If the political issue can somehow be solved, there is no reason why the Theobalds Road super-union won’t become even more super.

UNISON-GMB

If Dave Prentis and Paul Kenny were pop stars the gossip pages would have been full of their ‘on-off romance’ over the last few years. At first we thought Kenny was merely teasing Prentis in order to drive up the asking price from Unite, who would seem to be a better match for GMB’s membership. Since then, however, the flirting has become something more tangible, and the joint press conference at TUC referred to ‘this merger’. On the flip side, GMB finances are the healthiest they have been for some time, so the urgency to seek a merger to fill the pension fund gap is no longer there.

2-1 On paper probably still the favourite, but with a maverick jockey like PK you just never know.

Any news on any of these? Or any others? Drop us a line at thetealad@hotmail.co.uk

The Tea Urn would be interested to know the status of the dispute at Carillion in Wiltshire.

As well as the ongoing dispute with management, there were rumours that the GMB were going to go to the TUC regarding alleged corrupt behaviour from certain UNISON officials, but we don’t know if this happened. Anyone?